ARTICLE II.

SCHLEIERMACHER.

[Prepared for the Presbyterian Quarterly Review, from two Articles in the Studien and Kritiken, for 1859, which are based upon the work "Aus Schleiermacher's Leben. In Briefen. 2 bd. Berlin, 1858." (From Schleiermacher's Life. In letters. 2 vols., Berlin, 1858.) By Dr. Gustavus Baur, Professor at Giessen.]

The appearance of these volumes has given rise to some discussion in Germany, touching the true nature and degree of Schleiermacher's talents, and touching his personal worth. It has been held that these letters show him to have been a man of fine susceptibilities, but of little positive power, and not a reformer by any inward necessity. His nature has been described as feininine rather than positive. He indeed had a peculiar relish for the society of refined females, but this was because he always felt that they were more capable than are men of understanding and appreciating those finer shades of thought and feeling in which he delighted. Besides, his earnest, manly and vigorously active spirit sought and found among cultivated females the complement of its own nature, exactly as with the most vigorous and manly races, the sentiment of honor and love towards the female sex is the strongest. Receptivity in a very high degree may be joined with the capability of acting most powerfully on others in such an accomplished personality as was his. Through a stormy and troubled career he continued firm and true

to himself and held on his way of advancing purity with an energy of purpose rarely beheld and most worthy of imitation, crowning the whole with a dying triumph that reminded his associates of a death of Socrates ennobled and warmed by the breath of eternal, redeeming love. In the times of peril and suffering and of returning hope through which his country passed during his life, brave and struggling men felt that they had a firm reliance in him whom many called the great Schleiermacher, and enemies learned to respect the man whom they found to possess not alone the fixedness of iron, but sometimes too its keenness and its fiery heat.

That Schleiermacher was a reformer in the same sense with Luther is not claimed. He has also been compared with Melanchthon, but Schleiermacher was never willing to yield any thing of principle out of regard to circumstances or for the sake of peace; there was about him a candour that disregarded consequences, a sharpness and a consistency in maintaining and carrying out his principles that utterly forbade compromises. His work as a reformer lay in quite different circumstances from those which surrounded Luther. The work of that great man was to open a way of access to spiritual good among men who were ready and waiting for it; that of Schleiermacher was to arouse a worldly, indifferent age to appreciate the spiritual good within their reach. In his sphere he may be placed by the side of Goethe and Schiller in the sphere of art, Kant and Fichte in the sphere of speculation, Stein and W. Von Humboldt in politics. And just because his aim was the spiritual nature of his countrymen and because he sought the means of a reformation, not as Fichte, for example, in his "Discourses to the German Nation" in the way of speculation, but found it in the power of Christianity as attested by facts to redeem a ruined world; for this VOL. VIII.-26

reason his efforts were indeed less brilliant and famous but farther-reaching, more manifold, more fruitful and enduring than theirs. Neander has designated him as the man from whom a new period of church history will have to be dated.

He has been charged with dissimulation. His name signifies Veil-maker, and Schlegel, notwithstanding the protest of Goethe against this species of witticism, has suffered himself to be led into the perpetration of a pun, charging him and theologians generally with being what the name indicates-dissemblers. Schleiermacher was indeed a shrewd observer of persons, times and places. He did not go to every man with his heart upon his open palm. A strong sense of duty forbade him to enter fully and freely upon delicate and involved subjects where circumstances were unsuitable. But when he found himself understood, none could surpass him in openness and freeness, and when once he comprehended the position of things clearly and had found the proper method of operating, no difficulty could divert him from pursuing his end with the most tenacious endurance. "The heart of the honest man is in his face and in his letters to his friends;" and it is a fact that we find in these very letters, which are almost all of them addressed to his most intimate friends, the absence of reserve, the honesty and candor of his nature, and that rigorous truth which led him first of all to aim to be candid with himself and then to guard against deceptive appearances before others.

Before entering upon the letters themselves, we will give a sketch of the chief events in the outward life of Schleiermacher. He was born Nov. 21, 1768, at Breslau, where his father was stationed as Reformed chaplain to the army. Subsequently the family removed, and occupied different positions, and the parents,

having heard of the Institution of the Moravians at Niesky in Upper Lusatia, resolved to intrust him and a younger brother to their care. They entered in 1783; and the same year a sister Charlotte, with whom Schleiermacher kept up the closest intimacy and intercourse to her death, entered the community at Gnadenfrei. Two years later, he was transferred to the Brother's Seminary at Barby near Magdeburg. But here he was soon brought by no mere superficial pretence of enlightenment, but by the depth and thoroughness of his nature aiming after scientific truth, into conflict with many of the views and usages of the community, resulting in severe inward struggles and a difference with his father which was adjusted only a short time before the death of the latter. Nevertheless he at last consented to his son's pursuing his studies, for the future, at Halle. Here Schleiermacher remained, making his home with his uncle, the theological Professor Stubenrauch, for two years from the spring of 1787.

In the summer of 1790, he underwent his examination in theology, and through the good offices of the court preacher Sack, became tutor in the family of the Prussian Count Dohna-Schlobitten. In 1793, this relation was brought to a close in consequence of his strenuous conscientiousness towards others and his truth to himself. After this, we find the future theological reformer teaching in an orphan asylum in Berlin, and again in 1794, vicar to a relative in Landsburg. In October of this year his father died, an event so much the more deplored as the son had just begun once more to enjoy the sympathy of a revered but long estranged parent. Two years afterwards he was called to be preacher to the Berlin Hospital. The six years of residence in this city which followed, were rich in influ

ences particularly of a social character to develop and cultivate his mind and heart, and most significant in their bearing upon his after life. Introduced to the society of those refined and intellectual Jewesses, Henrietta Herz and Dorothea Veit, the daughter of M. Mendelsohn, and afterwards wife of Fr. Schlegel, he also became acquainted with the latter in the summer of 1797, and in December of the same year shared his home. Still more important was the acquaintance he made in May, 1801, upon a brief interview, with Ehrenfried Von Willich, a young theologian of the island of Rugen. That relation too with Eleonore Von Grunow, which afterwards cost him so much suffering, arose in this period, but through all the excitements of these new-found and in part passionate acquaintanceships, runs, like a deep and steady under-tone, that cordial affection for his true sister Charlotte. His relations to Eleonore led him in 1802, to deny himself the pleasures of that Berlin circle of friends, and accept a call to be court preacher at Stolpe in Pomerania. Thence in 1804, he was called as professor extraordinary and preacher to the University in Halle.

In February of the same year, Von Willich died of a prevailing nervous fever, and left Henrietta Von Muhlenfels, a widow at eighteen years old with an infant daughter; a son was born after the father's death. While a wife, Henrietta had carried on a lively correspondence with her husband's friend, addressing him as father, which she might well do to one more than twice her age. A very close friendship too existed between her entire family and Schleiermacher. In the summer of 1808 they were engaged, and in the following May they were married. This was a union based upon a most cordial affection of two really noble and beautiful souls for each other, most exemplary in its character